United States of America

The COVID-19 pandemic has been the most significant economic disruption to the international economy since the Great Depression. The IMF estimates that the global economy contracted by 3.5 percent last…

KEI’s 2021 Report on American Attitudes on the U.S.-ROK Alliance and North Korea Policy summarizes results from a survey commissioned by KEI and conducted by YouGov on May 6th to…

This paper addresses the U.S.-South Korea alliance in the context of Asia’s evolving security architecture. At the crux of the issue is the Biden administration’s desire to uphold the rules-based…

The Korea Economic Institute of America (KEI), with the generous support of the Korea Foundation, organized six “Vision Group” roundtable conversations with leading American scholars and commentators to discuss the…

By Jenna Gibson Halloween as we know it in the United States is still not widely celebrated in South Korea. Trick or treating is limited to kindergarten parties and English hagwons, and you’re unlikely to see many jack-o-lanterns or skeletons decorating peoples’ homes. But in recent years some parts of the holiday have been gaining…

By Jenna Gibson Last month, the Korean Ministry of Education announced major changes to the way South Korean students will learn English. Some of them are positive, and can potentially help ease the overwhelming classroom workload for Korean students. But these new policies may also have some unintended side effects. Schools will be cutting the…

By Kyle Ferrier In a 2014 speech in Dresden attempting to apply lessons from German unification to the Korean Peninsula South Korean President Park Geun Hye introduced the possibility for a Northeast Asian Development Bank. Still in the nascent stage of planning, it would serve as a multilateral development bank (MDB) to attract investment in…

With Germany marking the 25th anniversary of unification this is the second part of a five part series looking at insights from the German unification experience for the Korean peninsula. Part I on the challenges of integration can be found here. Part III on integrating the bureaucracy and the military can be found here. Part IV on the social challenges of…

Please join KEI and KIEP for a discussion about the first 10 years of KORUS and the future of the U.S.-Korea economic relationship.